‘Moment of Discovery is crucial to the war effort.’
‘Why would the daughter bathe in the buff without first having thoroughly checked that valley?’
‘You’re improving. Working with me is good for you.’
‘Did she see him leave, Louis? Is this what she’s afraid to tell us?’
‘Or is it simply what her mother really intended to do with the mushrooms?’
‘Poison the daughter’s husband and poison her own.’
‘Only to be killed herself.’
It was a land of castles where beauty leapt to meet the eye in towering cliffs whose ancient ramparts hugged a treed and placid river, warm yet cool in the early morning light. Franz Oelmann knew the road well and was an excellent driver. Hermann, seemingly content to play the man on holiday, lounged affably on the seat beside him making idle chatter or pointing out some feature far more worthy of the Rhine!
In the back seat of the big touring car, Madame Jouvet had shrunk into a far corner to stare blankly at the front seat. Knees primly together, hands in the lap of a pale blue dress, her fingers were tightly knitted. Now a sudden, nervous twisting of her wedding ring, now the gripping of a clenched fist.
St-Cyr sat opposite her across the barren no man’s land of leather that gave her no comfort. She knew she was trapped. He knew that if she got through the day, she might well try to kill herself.
What has she done? he demanded harshly of himself. Helped that mother of hers to paint the inner recesses of that cave? Helped to pull the wool over everyone’s eyes?
The repercussions of such a fraud would cause heads to roll. His own, his partner’s, others too. Ah merde.
She dreaded what they would discover in the house of her mother. She hated every kilometre of this magnificent route, the ancient traverse of traders and pilgrims, monks and their abbots, Cro-Magnon, too, and Neanderthal. As the crow flies, it was not far. Perhaps some fifty-five kilometres to the east-north-east. By road, perhaps eighty or ninety. And Franz Oelmann, who knows all the short cuts, has been looking at you, hasn’t he, madame? he asked himself, seeing her turn swiftly away to stare bleakly at a stone farmhouse and seek its every detail as if she, too, was aware of his thoughts.
He sees you as a threat he cannot tolerate, madame. Of all the heads to roll, his must surely be the first. He won’t let you do that to him.
A Nazi, a jackbooted boy out of one of the Ordensburgen, the Order Castles, and now a man specializing in propaganda and covert operations, Herr Oelmann had marked her down but she was not yet completely aware of this.
You poor thing, said St-Cyr to himself. We must not let it happen no matter how guilty you are.
At Souillac they left the river. Frightened by its absence, she tried to ignore the wooded hills and plateaus. And when a valley appeared, incised and cradling an ancient village, she shuddered as distance collapsed and the house drew nearer.
A narrow side road forced Oelmann to slow down. A cart, pulled by an old woman in sabots and black sackcloth, caused them to pause. The woman took her time and when the cart, with its load of sticks and manure, drew alongside she set the shafts down and paused to wipe a runny nose on a tattered sleeve. ‘Juliette … is it true?’
Deep wrinkles screwed that ancient face into the ripe olives of dark eyes that missed nothing. ‘Attend to me, my dear. It’s your Aunt Liline who is speaking, is it not? The same whose name you took for your very own daughter.’
‘It’s true.’
The woman pinched her nose and flung the rheum aside. ‘Then we must prepare for the burial and that fine husband of yours can kiss the blade before the guillotine falls.’
‘Must you?’ cried the daughter. ‘You know how hard this is for me. Can you not give me a moment’s peace? Always you are criticizing maman. She wanted me to marry Andre. I couldn’t say no. I couldn’t!’
‘It’s as I’ve always said. He was no good and the marks you bear on that pretty face your father’s family gave you are proof enough.’
‘Madame, please explain yourself,’ said St-Cyr. ‘We’re detectives from Paris.’
She stooped to take up the shafts. For one split second she gave him the benefit of a scathing glance and the finality of a curt nod. ‘Ernestine was a good woman whose only fault sits beside you, the result of her attempt to find a better life and lift herself from among us. The vin paille de Beaulieu, eh, messieurs? The sweet wine of the virgin sun-dried on a bed of straw.’ She clucked her tongue and tossed her head in salute. ‘The legs must never be spread to the moment of hope’s foolish passion nor should the years ever be given to its fleeting memory and futile prayers for its return. Now I will leave you to your murder and to this Paris you speak of.’
Ah nom de Dieu, de Dieu, the walnut had shed its husk. Now only the hard dark shell remained.
For as long as she dared, Juliette Jouvet looked tearfully at the cloud of yellowish dust that enveloped her aunt. At last the niece faced the back of the front seat again to knit and unknit her fingers, captive to the car. And all who saw it pass, paused in their labours to stare at her.
The house was not in the centre of the village but down by the river in the midst of a cluster of Renaissance buildings whose tiled roofs rippled orange-brown in the sunlight. There were three arched double doors at street level – former entrances to what had once been stables and pens for livestock. A simple set of wooden stairs led up to a door at the side – the shop entrance. Above the shop and post office, a covered balcony ran the width of the house with timbered, stuccoed walls behind. One french window was to the far left, a solid oak door off-centre to the right. Posters of some sort clung to the walls – the auberge was on this floor. Above it, the steeply-pitched roof rose to two garret dormers, one wide open to the elements and without the benefit of even a shutter, the other with its broken shutters closed.
There was a square tower to the right, set awkwardly into the corner of the roof, making the place look lop-sided. Here small shutters all but closed off a meagre window. Stucco and lath were being constandy shed from the tower’s base.
Madame Fillioux had left her son-in-law and family a costly bill for repairs.
Signs targeted the place. A drunken telegraph and telephone pole, barren of the ivy that sought to climb it, stood nakedly just off the front right corner. Grapevines did climb the walls but only to the balcony railing for ease of harvesting. Not a tree stood nearby to give the place a modicum of shade or grace. Not a flowerpot of geraniums. Madame Fillioux had had no time for such things. It would be cold in winter and insufferably damp.
‘Messieurs, could I … could I have a moment in there to be alone with my thoughts. It’s a very difficult time for me.’
Oelmann grinned. Kohler said nothing. Louis had to tell her. ‘It’s impossible, madame. I’m sorry but we have to see everything.’
‘And you do not trust me, do you?’
Had it been clever of her to ask, a last desperate attempt to find out exactiy where she stood?
‘Please, as soon as we can, my partner and I will leave you with your memories for as long as you wish.’
She could only try. That was all she could do, she said to herself, and hope they wouldn’t be able to keep their eyes on her all the time.
Light from the double doors filtered into the shop where worm-eaten beams were festooned with hanging pots, straw hats, brushes, coils of wire, coal scuttles no one would buy these days because there was so little coal, laundry baskets, coat hangers, ah so many things. Row on row of them above a long counter, cash desk and weighing scale where space was at a premium and glass display cases competed with a few dried beans and lentils, a little brown rice, split peas, cracked wheat and rolled oats. Toilet water, bleach – bleach for the hair also – pins, needles and ribbons, thread, bunting and buttonhooks, Madame Fillioux had carried the centuries. Poverty and isolation had combined to allow much of the pre-war stock to remain. Suspenders, eyeglasses, corsets and lisle stockings, ladies’ shoes with long laces. Lye and camphor. Spices … spices such as were no longer seen in the zone occupee. Cloves in tall glass jars, cinnamon sticks and whole black peppers. She must have kept a rigid control over those.